"Lyrist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Tennyson's case? Are not the portrayal of character and the rhythm and the melody of the drama qualities inherent in Tennyson, and are they in any distinct sense dramatic? If we declare Tennyson neither epic nor dramatic, but always lyric, adverse criticism melts away like snow in summer. As lyrist, all is congruous and enthralling. "The Idyls of the King," as a series of lyric romances, is beyond blame in technique. Tennyson tells a story. Dramatic poetry takes the story out of the poet's lips and tells itself. ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... embedded respectively in the Parlement of Foules and the Prologue to the Legende of Good Women are charming and musical. His extant shorter poems, however, whether early or late, offer no excuse for claiming high rank for him as a lyrist. He had very little sheer singing power, and though there are fine lines in his short poems, witness the famous "Flee fro the prees and dwell with soothfastnesse," they lack the sustained concentration of great work. From the drama, again, Chaucer ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... verse as an instrument of expression, he has no clear superior, probably no equal, so far at least as American readers are concerned, among writers who have employed the English language. As a satirist he has superiors, but scarcely as an inventor of jeux d'esprit. As a patriotic lyrist he has few equals and very few superiors in what is probably the highest function of such a poet—that of stimulating to a noble height the national instincts of his countrymen.... The rest of his poetry may fairly be said to gain on that of any of his American contemporaries save Poe in more sensuous ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... "red artillery," he sets too little store on the graceful yet sometimes decisive charges of the light brigades of literature. He feels nothing but contempt for the banter of men like Jerrold; despises the genial pathos of Lamb; and salutes the most brilliant wit and exquisite lyrist of our century with the Puritanical comment, "Blackguard Heine." He deified work as he deified strength; and so often stimulated his imitators to attempt to leap beyond their shadows. Hard work will not do everything: a man can only accomplish what he was born fit for. Many, in the first flush of ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... A Scotch lyrist, who, we are told, sings his own songs to perfection, has also recorded the very singular fact of various articles of household furniture (not exactly tables) being occasionally endued "with a disagreeable life." One of his best ballads, in which he describes the bickerings ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... Bells" of Edgar Poe—which is, among minor poems, in regard to the belfry, what Southey's "Lodore" is to the cataract, full, sonorous, and exhaustive. And there it is, in that marvellous little poem of "The Bells," that the American lyrist, as it has always seemed to us, has caught much of the eltrich force and beauty and poetic significance of "The Chimes" as they were originally rung forth in the prose-poetry ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... the poet. Upon the whole, it was quite in the lyric style—a style I always admire on account of that spirit of Sibyllic confidence and assurance which is, perhaps, its prime ingredient. But come," glancing at his companion's glass, "for a lyrist, you let the bottle ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... our lyrist owe part of their popularity to the fact of their being an epitome of melodies, moods and memories that had belonged for centuries to the national life, the best [v.04 p.0858] inspirations of which have passed into them. But ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... like many good men and true, tasted the inside of a prison—doubtless, like Lovelace and Wither, singing his heartfelt minstrelsy behind the wires of his cage. He was not a fighting man. Poets rarely are. More than one lyrist—as Archilochus and Horace may bear witness—has thrown away his shield on the field of battle. Vaughan wisely retired to his native Wales. Jeremy Taylor, too, it may be remembered, was locking up the treasures of his richly-furnished mind and passionate feeling within the ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... deference to the force of public estimation on the subject of the songs. Let it not be thought, from the tenor of our subsequent remarks, that we ourselves are at all prejudiced against Dibdin. So far is it the reverse, that we were brought up from childhood 'in belief' of that gifted lyrist: our father repeated to us in early life his finest songs, and we have never ceased to regard him with sincere admiration. He was a man of true genius in his peculiar walk, and it has been well and truly said of him, that, 'had ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... girl (and a very beautiful girl) she and her sister, and a third, nec diversa, met the poet, and expected high discourse. But his speech was all of that wingless insect which "gets there, all the same," according to an American lyrist; the insect which fills Mrs Carlyle's letters with bulletins of her success or ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... though, to be sure, he always hated that life. For all his flirting with revolutionarism, he never displayed great originality or depth of thought. He was simply an extraordinarily gifted author, a perfect versifier, a wondrous lyrist, and a delicious raconteur, endowed with a grace, ease and power of expression that delighted even the exacting artistic sense of Turgenev. To him aptly applies the dictum of Socrates: "Not by wisdom do the poets write poetry, but by ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... crazed by the disaster were leaping into the blaze itself, Nero mounted to the roof of the palace, where nearly the whole conflagration could be taken in by a sweeping glance, and having assumed the lyrist's garb he sang the Taking (as he said) of Ilium, which, to the ordinary vision, however, appeared to be the ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... rather (as a contributor D. O. C. points out in an interesting communication published by an evening contemporary) of the harsher and more personal note which is found in the satirical effusions of the famous Raftery and of Donal MacConsidine to say nothing of a more modern lyrist at present very much in the public eye. We subjoin a specimen which has been rendered into English by an eminent scholar whose name for the moment we are not at liberty to disclose though we believe that our readers ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Beauty's daughters," "She walks in beauty," "Maid of Athens," "I enter thy garden of roses," the translation "Sons of the Greeks," and others, have a flow and verve that it is pedantry to ignore; but in general Byron was too much of the earth earthy to be a great lyrist. Some of the greatest have lived wild lives, but their wings were not weighted with the lead of the love ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... (iii. 121), who represents the poet as sitting in the royal chamber when audience was given to the Persian herald. In return for his favour and protection, Anacreon wrote many complimentary odes upon his patron. Like his fellow-lyrist, Horace, who was one of his great admirers, and in many respects of a kindred spirit, Anacreon seems to have been made for the society of courts. On the death of Polycrates, Hipparchus, who was then in power at Athens and inherited the literary tastes of his ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... ARI'ON, a lyrist of Lesbos, lived chiefly at the court of Periander, Corinth; returning in a ship from a musical contest in Sicily laden with prizes, the sailors plotted to kill him, when he begged permission to play one strain on his lute, which being conceded, dolphins ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... botanist and naturalist, though he spake of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall; and of beasts, and of fowls, and of creeping things, and of fishes—less celebrated even as a lyrist, though his songs were a thousand and five, than for his proverbs and moral maxims of which the record takes care to tell us he spake no less than "three thousand." So much then for the dignity of our subject: ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... trochee, anapest &c.; hexameter, pentameter; Alexandrine; anacrusis[obs3], antispast[obs3], blank verse, ictus. elegiacs &c. adj.; elegiac verse, elegaic meter, elegaic poetry. poet, poet laureate; laureate; bard, lyrist[obs3], scald, skald[obs3], troubadour, trouvere[Fr]; minstrel; minnesinger, meistersinger[Ger]; improvisatore[obs3]; versifier, sonneteer; rhymer, rhymist[obs3], rhymester; ballad monger, runer[obs3]; poetaster; genus irritabile vatum [Latin]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... beauty of the admired woman and the beauty of a child. He is indeed too wary ever to make it. So is the poet. As comparisons are necessary to him, he will pay a frankly impossible homage, and compare a woman's face to something too fine, to something it never could emulate. The Elizabethan lyrist is safe among lilies and cherries, roses, pearls, and snow. He undertakes the beautiful office of flattery, and flatters with courage. There is no hidden reproach in the praise. Pearls and snow suffer, in a sham fight, a mimic defeat that does them no harm, and no harm comes to the lady's ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... the final impression we receive from the work of Robert Browning is that of a great nature, an immense personality. The poet in him is made up of many men. He is dramatist, humorist, lyrist, painter, musician, philosopher and scholar, each in full measure, and he includes and dominates them all. In richness of nature, in scope and penetration of mind and vision, in energy of passion and emotion, he is ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons |
